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Karma: 136

oooo 5 Aug 2020 4:42 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Tim Liptrot’s comment on: My paper was signalling the whole time—Robin Hanson wins again
Two words, one meme: Robin Hanson.

oooo 19 Apr 2017 2:16 UTC
0 points
in reply to: tristanm’s comment on: Straw Hufflepuffs and Lone Heroes

What that means is that we have a lot of people with individualist personalities who are developing themselves in a way that is primarily an individual endeavor.

The term gamification has been bandied about a lot to the point of uselessness, but it seems this community benefits directly from such re-framings. Individual endeavours could be considered Level 1.

That sort of makes trying to have well-organized group projects a bit of a challenge. I think if you’re arguing that we should encourage people to develop their social skills, I wouldn’t be opposed to that at all. I think the only sort of challenge you’ll get from taking that route is how to do it without compromising qualities that make us rational (for example, how do we prevent social pressures that encourage irrationality from taking hold).

Level 2 (or 1000, since it seems rather difficult). The trick is to somehow provide “HOWTOs”. Lesswrong speedruns (sic) consist of a hodgepodge of absorbing the Sequences, HPMoR, SSC and this site, depending on how far back one wants to go.

oooo 6 Dec 2016 2:24 UTC
1 point
in reply to: berekuk’s comment on: On the importance of Less Wrong, or another single conversational locus

It all works quite well and after using it for a few months the idea of going back to simple upvotes/downvotes feels like a significant regression.

This Slack-specific emoji capability is akin to Facebook Reactions; namely a wider array of aggregated post/comment actions.

oooo 6 Dec 2016 2:20 UTC
1 point
on: Increase Your Child’s Working Memory
Thank you for these exercise samples. I didn’t realize that I was running through a less powerful flavour of these exercises until this post. Do you by chance have any examples of exercises that you’ve both worked on to increase your child’s verbal and linguistic capabilities?

oooo 5 Dec 2016 6:56 UTC
4 points
in reply to: moridinamael’s comment on: Which areas of rationality are underexplored? - Discussion Thread
I upvoted you because I noticed that the term “team level rationality” piquing my interest. Is “team level” or “group rationality” emphasized or taught in follow-on CFAR workshops?

This seems like a potential area of low-hanging fruit where existing “executive team coaching program” content could be adapted. Somebody hypothesized that the growing popularity of local meetups and professional growth sapping LW readership. Group effectiveness content, especially in the context of the world-class teams/names/organizations that you listed, could potentially be immediately implemented in local meetups and in professional capacities.

I don’t doubt however that as difficult as it has been for a community to generate individual rationality content, group effectiveness content is even harder to generate due to a perceived smaller set of individuals capable of proven & effective group enhancement, longer timeframes to realize group results and outline group experiments, plus a will and capability to explain said technique progressions.

EDIT: Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” has an anecdote about the “leaderless group challenge” as the inspiration for his illusion of validity cognitive bias. The group challenge is an example of the type of activity, often described as “team building exercises”, that could be adapted specifically to raise small collective acuity and coordination effectiveness. As far as I’m aware, no widely available content exists specific outside of specific business, military or other domain-specific niches.

Another indirect tangent is the “Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande, drawing on his experience with medical errors (especially in high-performing OR units). Although this a huge step in the right direction, it still doesn’t quite get to the root of formulating and internalizing a set of practices specific to enhancing collective effectiveness (even in a small groups).

oooo 22 Jul 2014 2:51 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Mark_Friedenbach’s comment on: Look for the Next Tech Gold Rush?
Not even Freicoins? Or do you mean weird, un-innovative altcoins that seem to add no real value to the ecosystem? Generally, it’s hard to tell, but it seems certain altcoins try hard to differentiate themselves. Monero and Freicoin stand out as sufficiently different that they could turn out to be valuable (as far as altcoins go).

EDIT: Read the rest of the comments and noticed that you explicitly stated Freicoin is a possible exception to the rule. People may also be interested (although may also choose for various reasons not to invest) in other altcoins such as Ethereum (too complicated?), Zerocash (untested moon math?), Counterparty (“let’s reduce the size of OP_RETURN and see how XCP reacts!”), Swarm (based on Counterparty) or Darkcoin (ninja premine?).

oooo 28 Apr 2014 3:50 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Louie’s comment on: Request for concrete AI takeover mechanisms
OP: >>So MIRI is interested in making a better list of possible concrete routes to AI taking over the world. And for this, we ask your assistance.

Louie: >>Katja doesn’t speak for all of MIRI when she says above what “MIRI is interested in”.

These two statements contradict each other. If it’s true that Katja doesn’t speak for all of MIRI on this issue, perhaps MIRI has a PR issue and needs to issue guidance on how representatives of the organization present public requests. When reading the parent post, I concluded that MIRI leadership was on-board with this scenario-gathering exercise.

EDIT: Just read your profile and I realize you actually represent a portion of MIRI leadership. Recommend that Katja edit the parent post to reflect MIRI’s actual position on this request.

oooo 28 Apr 2014 3:44 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Request for concrete AI takeover mechanisms
Upvoted for only this sentence fragment: “More benevolently, the AI makes a huge amount of money off of financial markets [...]”.

oooo 30 Jan 2014 15:51 UTC
1 point
in reply to: XiXiDu’s comment on: Huffington Post article on DeepMind-requested AI ethics board, links back to LW [link]
Q6. How much influence will the ethics committee actually have? For example, are there commercial and IP clawback provisions if the committee is deemed to be ignored or sidelined?

oooo 13 Jan 2014 2:38 UTC
0 points
in reply to: fubarobfusco’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
A North American non-Montessori educator (director of daycare) said that Montessori is different in various parts of the world. I did not do more research into this, and obviously this comment can be easily biased and seen to have an agenda. However, based on this comment alone, I’m also interested in whether you (Gunnar_Zarncke) thought about putting your children through (European) Montessori.

oooo 27 Dec 2013 18:24 UTC
6 points
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: A proposed inefficiency in the Bitcoin markets
Unlike real estate which requires much higher amounts of capital (read: your after-tax savings) to invest in, Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies allow for people with just double-digit or less discretionary income to speculate.

In this manner, speculators/gamblers/investors are able to gain some experience with actual money and trading. The fees on the cryptocurrency exchanges are rather low, and since cryptocurrencies can go down to multiple decimal places, transaction fees of 0.45% (for example) are still feasible even on sub-$1 trades.

Of course, one could say that play money is just as useful for this type of scenario, but I think there’s a cognitive fallacy that tries to explain how people behave when real vs. imaginary money is in play, even though the net effect is essentially the same (let’s ignore the salient point that just $100 invested in Bitcoin in Jan 2013 would have netted $5000 in Dec 2013 as that needlessly distorts the point).

EDIT: One is unlikely to outguess the bitcoin market vs. any other exotic or local real estate market. However, cryptocurrencies allow for one to cheaply test whether they can outguess or not. Real estate is not cheap to test your prediction skills.

oooo 21 Dec 2013 2:08 UTC
11 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2013
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.”

-Lao Tzu (c.604 − 531 B.C.)

oooo 9 Dec 2013 5:20 UTC
0 points
in reply to: EGarrett’s comment on: International cooperation vs. AI arms race
Judge.me was shutdown in July 2013, but evidently Net-Arb is another service carrying on the Judge.me torch and focusing primarily on internet arbitration.

oooo 5 Dec 2013 21:46 UTC
2 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: International cooperation vs. AI arms race
How much would AI developers be willing to sacrifice? They may be sufficiently concerned to at this risk as explained, but motivated and well-funded organizations (or governments) should have no problem attempting to influence, persuade or convert a fraction of AI developers to think otherwise.

I wonder if global climate change can be used as an analogy highlighting what some climate scientists are willing to publish due to funding and/or other incentives beyond scientific inquiry.

oooo 5 Dec 2013 21:41 UTC
3 points
in reply to: JoshuaFox’s comment on: Snowdenizing UFAI
This presupposes that the AGI community is, on average, homogenous across the world and would behave accordingly. What if the political climates, traditions and culture make certain (powerful) countries less likely to be fearful given their own AGI pool?

In otherwords, if country A distrusts their staff more than country B due to political/economic/cultural factors, country A would be behind in the AGI arms race, which would lead to the “even if I hold onto my morals, we’re still heading into the abyss” attitude. I could see organizations or governments rationalizing against the community moral pledge in this way by highlighting the futility of slowing down the research.

oooo 22 Nov 2013 8:05 UTC
46 points
on: 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Taken for the first time. ’Twas fun.

oooo 18 Nov 2013 4:36 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Arkanj3l’s comment on: I am switching to biomedical engineering and am looking for feedback on my strategy and assumptions
To do this your best bet is to talk to large numbers of biomedical engineering alumni. As a data point, you mentioned before that SFU has one of the most respectable biomed engineering programs. As another data point, University of Toronto doesn’t allow general stream undergraduate engineers to choose certain specialties requiring that extra bit of intellectual horsepower unless you are able to enter (and survive) the more theoretical Engineering Science program. Biomed Engineering is one of the specialties that falls in this category.

I feel the reason that most biomed engineers don’t pursue CS-ish careers is because many of them feel that their additional knowledge, training and suffering should be used for more “important” pursuits (grad school, designing life-saving medical devices, etc.). Combined with the general engineering school attitude that their education is more rigorous or harder than probably any other major in university (other than perhaps actuarial), and you have a situation where most engineers freshly graduated (barring Computer Engineers) would view pursuing a CS-ish career as a major step back.

However, given your stated interest in other goals (e.g. cognitive science, human cybernetics/enhancements/augmentation), this may not be a bad path to take provided you are mindful of and can navigate the immediate post-graduation job interviews.

As others suggested in this thread, it seems that you’re probably much more geared towards a startup culture, in which case if you’ve chosen your electives correctly in 3rd and 4th year you would hopefully have had the chance to focus in on data visualization and/or bioinformatics and show an impressive body of work.

If you are motivated enough you may also try to take CS & math courses in the summer, or work on design projects to build up a body of work. Ideally summers would also be taken up with internships also, but at least the studying intensity would be somewhat reduced to allow you to get ahead on other credits/courses/knowledge/portfolio.

oooo 31 Oct 2013 9:25 UTC
4 points
on: Why officers vs. enlisted?
Perhaps in your corporate ladder discussions it may be useful to mention unions vs. managers to make the point clearer. Focusing on senior managers vs. executives is a weaker description because most people see that as one unified ladder, and not two separate ladders.

Similarly: What’s a corporate executive? I understand that there is a management hierarchy, but why the arbitrary distinction between a senior manager and a junior executive? Aren’t those just two rungs on the ladder? In corporate-speak, an executive is called a “decision maker.” What a strange term! Isn’t a manager or even a lowly “individual contributor” also a decision maker—at the scope that their own managers allow?

Yes, they are just two rungs on the (same) ladder. In corporate-speak, an executive is usually responsible for an entire function (e.g. marketing, HR, finance, engineering, IT, sales). “Junior executive” is typically an informal title bandied about in corporations with a deep management hierarchy tree. Senior Manager is usually a formal title. The distinction is less clearcut than you believe other than the formal title vs. informal social references.

oooo 31 Oct 2013 9:16 UTC
2 points
in reply to: JoshuaFox’s comment on: Why officers vs. enlisted?
Agreed. There is no qualitative difference between senior manager and executive beyond the increased scope of responsibilities and scale with which your decisions affect others, both of which could be attributed to the word “agentiness.”

oooo 31 Oct 2013 9:13 UTC
6 points
in reply to: JoshuaFox’s comment on: Why officers vs. enlisted?
I believe the main distinction was primarily historical when nobles and aristocracy commanded peasants. I had always thought that commissions (from the Queen/King or head of state) used to be put on sale by the state, similar to how France at one point used to sell public offices.

In today’s more modern times, one can become an officer by dint of having a post-secondary education. At least in Canada, you are typically an officer when you enlist provided you have a bachelor degree and pass certain intelligence tests.

Everybody else (NCOs or enlisted) typically become technical SMEs due to lack of upward mobility.

Doctors are SMEs, but they also have extensive post-secondary education. Average grunts and NCOs don’t start out as SMEs, but given enough time (provided they survived) become an expert would have made perfect sense.